“We have a clean sheet approach to everything we’re doing,” Crosier said at a quarterly meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. “The workforce today … operates differently than the workforce did 10, 15, 20, 35 years ago for so many reasons. We want to make sure we understand that and are on the front end of figuring out how we can leverage that.”
The group will be led by Patricia Mulcahy, the deputy chief of space operations for personnel and logistics services and the first civilian hired to the Space Force. The second person hired was also a woman, who is working in the planning, programming and resources office, Crosier said.
“What it does show with these two hires is … there are tremendous opportunities for women in the U.S. Space Force,” Crosier said.
The role of women in society has undergone a revolution in the more than seven decades between the establishment of the Air Force in 1947 and the creation of the Space Force in 2019. As plans to create the space-focused branch get fully underway, the Pentagon has the opportunity for the first time to create a culture that reflects the values of 2020, according to national security experts who study gender.
“The most important difference is that it’s being stood up in 2020 as opposed to 1940s or 1840s or 1740s,” said Heather Hurlburt, the director of new models of policy change at New America, a think tank. “There’s a difference in expectation around what men and women can do, both physically and mentally.”
In addition to simply being organized in a different time, the nature of the Space Force’s work environment means the physical requirements that long prevented women from serving in some jobs such as combat or special operations forces won’t be an issue. Crosier said many space operators don’t need to do traditional deployments to the front lines because personnel can operate space assets from anywhere.
“We’re going to be operating very differently in that most of our capabilities are operating either from home station or from the rear areas, not necessarily up on the forward front of battle,” he said. “That does give us the opportunity to look at those physical restrictions or limitations a little bit differently.”
Other services are also beginning to offer more services that benefit women. The Marine Corps is considering expanding its maternity leave to offer new mothers a full year away from the military, which far surpasses the time typically offered in the private sector. The services also each have a Career Intermission Program, which allows service members to take between one and three years away from the military and re-enter service at their same pay grade. Those programs are open to both men and women, who can use them for things like going back to school, raising a child or caring for an elderly family member.
Whether the Space Force offers these types of services is a good indicator of its attitude toward women, said Hurlburt, who added these policies will better enable the Pentagon to compete for a highly skilled technology workforce.
Crosier said the service is already considering a program that would increase flexibility by allowing technical experts from industry and academia to flow in and out of the Space Force for stints of only a few years instead of committing to a 20-year career. He gave the example of someone in academia who wanted to serve in the Space Force for only a few years, then go back to academia, then come back into the service when their kids had graduated high school.
“There are talented, talented Americans out there and we have preciously few [science, technology, engineering and math] resources across the government today,” he said. “How do we make the service and the Space Force look attractive enough? And part of it comes from being flexible enough that we can meet their needs and our needs at the same time.”
Another public way the service is aiming to be more inclusive to women is deciding what to call its members, a decision that could be made in the next several weeks. Crosier would not say what the name will be, but did say it won’t be a gendered term, like “airman.”
Coming up with a gender-neutral name for Space Force personnel is “really essential,” said Rebecca Keiser, the chair of Women in Aerospace, who has fought to do away with the term “manned spaceflight” during her time at NASA as a special adviser for innovation and public-private partnerships. “That kind of terminology … sends a message that you think about women one way and men in another way,” she said.
But being inclusive of women is about more than just a name, Hurlburt said.
“All the agony about what we call the members of Space Force … becomes a stand-in for these other changes that would be much more effective,” she said. “It’s tempting to think we can just come up with the right name and that signals our intentions.”
Source: politico.com
See more here: news365.stream
